IBM is looking to boost backbone connectivity options for users by adding support for Fibre Channel across its line of servers.
By year-end, the firm is ex-pected to add Fibre Channel interface boards to everything from its mainframes to its NetFinity servers.
IBM is also expected to add Fibre Channel support to its 9729 Optical Wavelength Division Multiplexer and to resell a communications device from Ancor Communications, Inc. that will let users link Fibre Channel servers to Gigabit Ethernet backbones.
Until now, IBM has supported Fibre Channel on its RS/6000 servers running AIX and on its RS/6000-based Scalable Power parallel processing servers.
Fibre Channel is a network technology that can support data throughput speeds in excess of 100M bit/sec. It has typically been used to link big servers with high-speed storage devices or to cluster servers to support high-bandwidth applications.
IBM intends to join Digital Equipment Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., Data General Corp. and EMC Corp. with a line of Fibre Channel products.
IBM's Global Services division is so enamored of Fibre Channel it recently installed Ancor's GigWorks Fibre Channel switches to move hundreds of terabytes of data every night from IBM's Research Triangle Park, N.C., facility to a central backup center.
"1998 will be the year for Fibre Channel," said Ron Howell, network architect at IBM Global Services. Howell is interested in using Ancor's switch in his net to connect workgroups demanding high-speed, wide-bandwidth communications to the backbone.
Howell said Fibre Channel products have load-balancing and automatic failover capacities that are critical to most company's operations. "We can't have our applications down for even one second," he said.
By adding Fibre Channel support to its server line, IBM is trying to cash in on the growing trend to cluster servers, analysts said. Fibre Channel also offers a much more powerful way to link external storage to a server than today's SCSI interfaces. SCSI supports the clustering of at most two servers; Fibre Channel lets users link any number of servers to storage units.
While Fibre Channel products have been available for years, analysts note, their popularity has only now begun to grow.
Others said Fibre Channel still has a long way to go before it is considered a mainstream backbone technology.
"Instances of people running Fibre Channel to the desktop are as common as people getting struck by lightning while riding UFOs," said Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corp., a consultancy in Voorhees, N.J.
As for Ancor, the firm will be announcing a product that lets users tie Fibre Channel products to a Gigabit Ethernet backbone. The unnamed device will convert Gigabit Ethernet frames into Fibre Channel and vice versa, Ancor said. Executives at the firm did not disclose the name of its device but said it would cost between $8,000 and $10,000 and would be on display at the upcoming NetWorld+Interop 98 trade show.
